by Minick, Jim;
I tell you what. Once I got to flying again, I planned on winging it back and finding that dog and doing some harm.
I heard her call him Lucky.
Yeah, right. Lucky, my foot.
23
Ada heard the cows. She remembered her father trying to milk all twenty Holsteins by himself. She sat up, startling Will. “Whoa, there.” He tried to slow her as she stood and brushed off her dress.
“We have cows to milk, don’t forget.” She held her hand to her mouth and grinned. “And Papa’s down there trying to do it all by himself.”
“Listen.” He scanned the farm below. “I hear Cicero. And I hear your dog.” He took off running with Ada close behind.
They found her parents standing near the blocks with Cicero on top. “Just in time, Mr. Burk,” her mother said. “I was trying to decide whether to get my gun and shoot this thing or just leave him here to breathe smoke and die a slow death.”
“Oh, Mama, you wouldn’t.”
“Wait ’til you see the gash on Lucky’s nose. You might think again about getting close to that bird.”
Her father shook his head and walked to the milking shed.
Will moved to the stack and cooed to Cicero. He offered a peanut, but the raven turned away. “Come on, buddy. I’m sorry. Let’s just get you back to the car so you can rest up.” Will gently picked him up and carried him away.
That evening, after supper and a goodbye kiss, Will slipped into his car, where he found a groggy Cicero. “What were you thinking, big boy?” He stroked the raven’s beak. “Jumping from the car and taking on that dog? You’re crazy, buddy.” He drove through Hopewell, the sun low in the sky as he headed west.
On the turnpike, the hum of the tires lulled Cicero to sleep. Will glanced across the seat where the raven had settled, eyes closed. His black head wobbled, and soon the beak rested on its tip, the bird’s whole head wavering with every turn. After a while, Cicero sighed and tucked his head beneath his good wing.
Will exited at Amberson, and after he unlocked the gate, he returned to find Cicero squawking. “I ain’t leaving you,” he said as he put the car in gear.
The county roads lacked the pike’s straightness and smoothness, and Cicero stayed awake through the curves and bumps. He turned his head at dogs, someone mowing a lawn, and always, other birds. The raven dipped to get a better view, tilting to watch.
“We’ll get you flying like that soon enough.”
Cicero looked at him and back at a hawk circling high.
“Just you wait, and you’ll be swooping and cawing like all the other ravens. Shoot, you’ll be such a good flyer that hawk won’t have a chance. You’ll be stealing all kinds of feathers for me, won’t you, big boy?”
Cicero bobbed his head and said, “OK.”
Will about steered into the ditch. He stopped the car in the middle of the road in the middle of Path Valley and gazed at his companion. “What did you just say?”
Cicero looked at him, as if to ask, why’d you stop the car? He peered out the side window. He stayed silent.
Will tried again. “Hey, buddy. You want to see Aunt Amanda, don’t you?”
Cicero ignored him, didn’t even turn his head.
“Well, shoot.” Will took his foot off the brake. “Let’s just get on home and get you some supper.”
“OK,” said Cicero.
And Will knew for sure he heard it right. He smiled and stroked Cicero’s head. “OK,” Will croaked an imitation of the bird’s new word. “OK, OK, OK,” he repeated. That got Cicero to turn his head. Soon, bird and man passed down the road, bobbing their heads, singing their OK chorus over and over.
In the soft light of dusk, Will drove past his apartment and headed on to Aunt Amanda’s. She might have a piece of pie saved for him, he thought, and she needed to hear his new trick.
Will entered the back door, shouting hello. Cicero rode his shoulder, cawing loudly.
“Well, hello, Will. Hello, Cicero.” Aunt Amanda came from her study. “Have you eaten?”
Will said yes, but he could always eat more dessert, and Cicero clucked his tongue.
“Guess that means he’s hungry, too.” Amanda reached out to stroke the bird’s head. Cicero bowed and grew quiet with pleasure. “You’re a pretty bird. Look at those long, sleek feathers.” Will told her about the little escapade with Lucky, and Aunt Amanda examined him more carefully. “Looks like you got the better of that skirmish, Mister Cicero—but don’t expect that to always happen. You got to be more careful now, you understand?”
The bird ruffled his feathers.
“So, what would you like to eat? I caught a mouse, and I boiled some eggs, and I even bought some chicken, just for you. How about a plate with a little of all of it?”
As Aunt Amanda turned to the cupboard, Cicero bobbed and said, “OK.”
She stopped, her hands in midair. Slowly she faced Will and Cicero. She raised her eyebrows and tilted her head. “Did Cicero just say OK?”
The bird looked out the window. Will shrugged his shoulders, making Cicero bob his head. “Don’t know. You’ll have to ask him.”
Aunt Amanda stepped closer to look Cicero in the eye, but he kept turning his head, avoiding her gaze. “Cicero,” she addressed him. “Did you just say something?”
The raven stayed silent. But Will couldn’t hold it in anymore. “He did, Aunt Amanda. He said OK. He said it once near Rebuck’s and then wouldn’t say it for another few miles, no matter what I said. Then I imitated him like this”—Will croaked a birdy “OK”—“and that got the ol’ boy talking.”
Will croaked it again, and Cicero responded, bobbing his head with each O, his whole body talking those magical letters.
Aunt Amanda clapped and laughed as Will imitated the head-bobbing bird, the two of them OK-ing back and forth, the bird a beat after Will, their chorus filling the house.
For dessert, Aunt Amanda served Will a piece of shoofly pie, and she set a plateful of goodies on the floor for Cicero. He played with his food, crunching every bone in the mouse before swallowing it whole.
Cicero
So I said OK. Big deal. It was just a matter of figuring out how to work my larynx and tongue. And don’t you dare cut any bird’s tongue, especially mine. By god of all rockpiles, I’ll stone you for sure.
You humans think you’re the only ones. Conceited as damn eagles. Those two letters, really, they’re easy. The K sound we say all the time, with cronks and caws and cockadoodledos (well, some of us do, anyway). I mean, even crows can say K.
O was a little harder. Had to pull it out of the middle of cronk and then put’m together. OK, already.
OK as in OK Corral. OK as in yes, I’m hungry. OK as in I’m going to KO you if you don’t stop making me say OK.
I’m telling you, there’s more where that came from, so just hold your horses, OK?
Now, feed me that yummy mouse.
24
After work, Will discovered another of Dickson’s pamphlets, this one stuck under the windshield wiper. Always, they came in stark colors—red and orange, black, and white. Always they had the word will underlined—“Will you be ready?” “Where will you spend eternity?” Always Will took them home to burn or give to Cicero, who loved to shred them.
“The man needs to give it up,” he said to Cicero. “I am happy as a belly-full raven not being saved.” He threw the newest pamphlet on the floor and started the car.
Will exited the pike and drove to Mark Hoover’s tidy homestead beside the one-room schoolhouse.
“Anyone home?” he hollered into the screen door.
“Back here,” a voice called from behind him. Mr. Hoover, with his black-framed glasses, came from a toolshed. He wiped his hands on a rag before shaking Will’s hand.
“I been expecting you. Thought it ’bout time that bird get unwrapped.” He pushed his glasses up on his nose. “Looks like you’ve done tamed him already. Can I pet him?”
“Yes, sir, but it helps to
have a nut.” The bird’s eyes followed Will as he pulled out a peanut and handed it to Mr. Hoover.
“Hey, there, birdy, birdy.” Mr. Hoover offered his open palm, and Cicero looked away a moment before pinching the nut in his beak.
“You remember me, don’t you, now?” Mr. Hoover stroked the raven’s chest. “How are you feeling these days, big boy?”
Cicero rested his beak on Mr. Hoover’s hand.
“Well, look at that. I think you do remember.” He rubbed Cicero’s beak, and the raven closed his eyes.
“You got the touch,” Will said.
“Indeed, indeed.” He invited Will into the schoolhouse, saying, “This will be a good place to work on him.” As they climbed the stairs, Mr. Hoover told how his father donated the land for this schoolhouse and how he and Mark both had taught here. “Forty-five years between us.” He unlocked the heavy wooden door. “When they opened the new elementary down in Newburg a few years ago, I figured it was time for me and this schoolhouse to both retire.” They entered to the smell of old books. Covered quilt frames stood to one side, a potbelly stove rested in the middle, and a giant chalkboard filled the front wall. “On Wednesdays, the Ladies Aid Society comes here to quilt. Don’t mess with their stuff, now. They’re pretty particular. I’m married to one.” He winked. He cleared the broad teacher’s desk and motioned for Will to put Cicero on it.
“Let’s have a look at you now.” Gently, Mr. Hoover lifted the stub of Cicero’s leg. “Well, that’s healed over good. Has he been using it?”
“Yesterday I watched him hold down a walnut with it while he pecked out the meat.”
Mr. Hoover said good. He opened a desk drawer, rifling through the contents. “Now, when I cut off his bandages, he’s going to want to fly, but he’s going to be weak, too. It’d be best to restrict him somehow.”
“I’ve been reading my aunt’s bird books. The one on falconry gave me an idea, so I made this.” From his back pocket, Will pulled a coiled, long leather leash. “It’s a creance. And this”—motioning to what he pulled from a different pocket—“is a jess. It’s what goes around the bird’s leg, what the creance ties on to.”
Mr. Hoover inspected the leather handiwork. “So, you put this on the bird and run along on the ground while it flies?”
“That’s the idea.”
“I’d like to see that.” He found a pair of scissors and closed the drawer. “I was thinking more of letting him fly in a barn loft or something. You have access to any place like that?”
“The bird book mentioned that too.”
“Good.” Mr. Hoover nodded to Cicero. “Now, how about you holding him just above his wings while I cut off his bandages.”
As they worked, Mr. Hoover said, “Don’t let him go right away. I want to have a look at that wing just to make sure.”
Mr. Hoover gently separated the tape from the feathers. When done, he spread out Cicero’s wing. “Look at that. Can’t even tell where it was broke. He’s going to be weak for a few days or so, but buddy, you’ll be flying in no time.” He released his hold on Cicero and motioned for Will to do the same. “Let’s see what he does.”
Cicero shook and ruffled his feathers. He hopped to a bookcase, where he picked and preened. The two men watched as the raven worked over every feather.
“So how did you stop his leg from bleeding?” Will asked.
“I’m a powwow doctor, but it’s the Lord that stops blood and takes the fire out.”
“Takes the fire out?” No one on Will’s side of the mountain ever claimed to heal.
“I was taught by my grandmother how to say a special chant over a burn, and if you believe, if God works through the healer, then the fire leaves the burn.”
“That sounds pretty crazy.”
Mr. Hoover studied him for a moment. “It’s only as crazy as Jesus making the blind man to see or God healing Moses’ leprous hand.”
Will watched Cicero and didn’t speak.
“Do you believe in the Lord, Will Burk?”
Will wished he hadn’t spoken. “Can’t say that I do, Mr. Hoover. My mother died at my birth, my dad when I was fourteen, so Aunt Amanda’s done most of my raising. She took me to church, but after a while, I got tired of all the hypocrisy. And that church just felt as empty as this old schoolhouse, even when it was full of people. If God exists, he’s out in the woods for me. He’s in this bird. Not in no church.”
“You still can believe without going to church.”
“Believe what? That we’re all going to heaven or hell? That some god would kill his own son for our sorry selves? I have a hard time buying all that.”
“I see,” Mr. Hoover said, but Will wasn’t so sure. “I probably shouldn’t pry, but does Ada know this?”
“Know what, that I’m a heathen? No, sir, she doesn’t.”
“She’s a powwow doctor, too, you know? I taught her myself. Before that barn fire, she could stop blood and take out fire and cure all kinds of sickness. One time she healed Clyde McGrady’s cow by saying the chant over the phone.”
“That so.”
“And once she even took the fits out of a girl.”
Will rubbed the sole of his shoe over the wooden floor. “I had heard she could do some things, but I’ve never asked.” He paused, and then asked, “What happened to her in the fire?”
“That I don’t know, and I hate to speculate. Maybe you can ask her sometime?”
“I just might.” Though he wasn’t so sure.
Mr. Hoover stepped toward Cicero. “Let’s get this fellow to fly a little, how about it? Why don’t you stand over by the door and call him? Get him to come to you.”
The floorboards creaked as Will moved. He turned to find that Mr. Hoover had Cicero on his arm.
“Call him,” he said as he raised his forearm.
Will shouted his name and did a high whistle. The raven looked at him, then at Mr. Hoover, then back at Will. He spread his wings and tested them, whooshing the air.
“You can do it,” Mr. Hoover said softly.
Will called again and whistled.
Cicero leapt from Mr. Hoover’s arm and flew to Will. The men shouted and clapped as Will gave Cicero a cracker.
“Let’s do that again,” Mr. Hoover said. Each trial run, Cicero flapped three times to land on Will’s forearm.
“Remember to take it easy for a week or so,” Mr. Hoover said as they stepped onto the porch. “He needs to build up his strength.”
“Will do.” Will thanked Mr. Hoover and headed to Ada’s to help with the evening milking.
Cicero
Think about it. A feather is such a simple thing—all lightness and what looks like frill, all of it attached to a hollow bone. If you hold it to the light, you can almost see through that bone. Hard to believe what a feather can do.
And don’t you forget what a feather used to do—it wrote your words, lots of them, letters spilling over pages. All of it for you, you thankless crooks. Your forefathers plucked it from some hapless goose and called it a quill. Then they used it to write your declaration of independence. Yet there they were, dependent on a lowly feather to sign all of their names. Poor goose. Where’s her name?
But enough of that.
When I preen, I run my bill over each dibble and nub, each separate flange. I can feel the pockets of possibility, the way they all knit together to form one dark strand.
And I realize that a feather is a flame with a spine and ribs.
Or maybe a feather, a black one anyway, is the ghost of a flame. Like you’re sitting around a campfire at night, staring at that space between each flicker. There a flicker disappears, and that space of emptiness becomes a black feather full of stars.
So a feather is just a spark to ignite the air.
My god of all wrinkled mountains, I can’t wait to fly again.
25
One morning, Ada slipped into the church to practice. As soon as she opened the door, though, she wished she hadn’t. Reverend Zigle
r waited in the front pew reading his Bible.
He turned to greet her. “Good morning, Ada.”
“Good morning, Reverend.” Ada walked to the front, wondering what he wanted. Ever since he’d told her powwowing was a sin, she’d avoided him. She had asked for the next week’s hymns over the phone or during choir practice, any moment not like this.
“Sorry to hear about your barn.” He stood to speak.
“Thanks. And thanks for all that you’re doing to help. Daddy, Mama, and I, we all appreciate what you’ve asked the church to do.”
“We’re here to help each other, Ada. That’s what Jesus commands.”
Ada nodded and turned for the door. “I was just coming to practice. I didn’t mean to bother you. I’ll come back another time.”
“Please. Stay. I was about to leave myself.” He pulled out an old hymnal. “Plus I wanted to share something with you.” He opened the book and handed it to her. “Peter told me about that young man and his raven, and that made me remember this. It’s not in our hymnal, so I doubt you’ve seen it, but John Newton wrote it, and I’ve always liked all of his work.”
Ada held the dusty book and read aloud, conscious of her raspy voice filling the church:
Elijah’s example declares,
Whatever distress may betide,
The saints may commit all their cares
To him who will always provide . . .
“I like those first lines,” Ada said.
“Keep reading.”
When rain long withheld from the earth
Occasioned a famine of bread,
The prophet, secured from the dearth,
By ravens was constantly fed.
